ON THE DESIGN OF MODERN GEOSCIENCE FIELD EXPERIENCES

Field experiences for students in the geosciences remain valued components of undergraduate curricula, in part because they reinforce tactile and analytical skills necessary for the workforce. These experiences also enhance higher order thinking skills through testing and evaluating working hypotheses with real-world data, and through synthesizing field data and models to develop interpretations that accurately reflect existing and new data. Historically, field experiences have focused on unfamiliar and often physically challenging field areas. However, the design of modern field experiences needs to consider the variety of student backgrounds, personal situations, and other constraints, in order to maximize educational benefits to the broadest spectrum of students.

Access to many field areas can be problematic, due to landowner restrictions, physical limitations that can prevent students from reaching some or all of a field area, as well as weather and other environmental issues. In order to accommodate these and other constraints, an effective field exercise would include both on-location and virtual components, such that students could preview a field site virtually, visit a field location in person to the extent of their ability and time available, and revisit the field site virtually to re-examine locations as well as augment their collected data with information from locations that they were not able to visit. In some cases students may not be able to visit a field site in person, so a fully virtual version of the field experience may be necessary.

This talk highlights a field experience that focuses on an ~8 km² site in northeastern West Virginia. Landowners support access to the field area and have provided historical context for the region. Much of the field area is accessible via roadcuts on paved roads, with supplemental outcrops accessed by hiking over moderate terrain. Students use the StraboSpot app for data collection and mapping in the field. However, environmental and/or physical limitations may limit access to some of the outcrops, so a Google Earth database is available to supplement or replace on-location fieldwork. Students are provided with background information, basemaps and imagery, and evaluation rubrics at the start of the exercise. Map deliverables are prepared using ArcGIS or Google Earth and augmented with interpretative documents.